Fire Risk Assessments in Northern Ireland

Fire safety in Northern Ireland is not a variant of the English regime. It is a separate body of law with a different primary instrument, a different structure of duties, a different enforcing authority and — most consequentially in practice — a recording rule England and Wales abandoned three years ago and Northern Ireland still applies.

An assessor who works mainly in England and picks up a Northern Irish instruction can get most of the technical content right and still produce a report that cites the wrong Order throughout.

This article summarises Northern Ireland fire safety law for educational purposes and is not legal advice. The duty-holder carries the legal liability for fire safety in the premises. For specific compliance questions, consult a competent fire risk assessor or the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.

The Wrong Instrument Is the First Mistake

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 does not apply here. Article 1(4) of that Order is unambiguous:

"This Order extends to England and Wales only."

Northern Ireland runs on:

• The Fire and Rescue Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, Part 3 — the primary fire safety duties, enforcement, and offences.
• The Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010 — the detailed fire safety measures and the recording duty. Regulation 1 provides that they "shall come into operation on 15th November 2010".

Our wider guide to which fire safety law applies to which building maps all three UK regimes side by side.

Two Duties, Not One

England's Order concentrates the duty on a single "responsible person". Northern Ireland splits it across two articles, and the split matters because a duty-holder can be caught by one, the other, or both.

Article 25 — the employer duty

Article 25(1):

"Each employer shall ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of his employees in respect of harm caused by fire in the workplace."

Article 25(2) then requires each employer to:

"(a) carry out an assessment of the workplace for the purpose of identifying any risks to the safety of his employees in respect of harm caused by fire in the workplace; and (b) take in relation to the workplace such of the fire safety measures as are necessary to enable him to comply with the duty imposed by paragraph (1)."

Note the scope of the assessment under Article 25: it is directed at risks to employees, in the workplace.

Article 26 — the premises duty

Article 26(1):

"Where a person has control to any extent of relevant premises he shall, to that extent, comply with paragraph (2)."

And Article 26(2):

"(a) carry out an assessment of the relevant premises for the purpose of identifying any risks to the safety of relevant persons in respect of harm caused by fire in the relevant premises"

together with taking the necessary fire safety measures.

Three features of Article 26 are worth holding onto:

• "To any extent … to that extent." The duty is proportionate to the degree of control. Partial control produces a partial duty rather than none — which is how it reaches managing agents, maintenance contractors and others who are not the occupier.
• It protects "relevant persons", not just employees. Article 25 stops at employees; Article 26 covers everyone at risk.
• It reaches owners and obligation-holders too. Where someone controls premises but neither owns them nor runs an undertaking there, the owner also has to comply. And a person with an obligation under contract or tenancy relating to maintenance, repair or fire safety must comply to the extent of that obligation.

The practical consequence for an assessor. An employer occupying part of a Northern Irish building may hold an Article 25 duty for its workplace and an Article 26 duty for the part it controls, while the landlord holds an Article 26 duty for the common parts. A report that identifies "the responsible person" as a single party — English habit — has already mis-framed the position. Name each duty-holder against the article and the extent of control.

The Recording Divergence

This is the one to get right, because it runs the opposite way to most people's assumption that the rest of the UK follows England.

Regulation 8 of the 2010 Regulations:

"As soon as practicable after an assessment has been carried out or reviewed, the person with duties under Article 25 or 26 shall record the information specified in regulation 9 where—"

and the recording duty is then conditioned on any one of:

1. the person employs five or more employees, or
2. a licence or registration under a statutory provision is required for the premises, or
3. an alterations notice requiring this is in force.

In England and Wales, that shape of threshold is gone. Since 1 October 2023, section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 has required the assessment to be recorded in full — as GOV.UK guidance puts it, "in all circumstances". Section 156 amends the Fire Safety Order directly rather than sitting on top of it as a separate England-only instrument, so it reaches Wales too: it was commenced for Wales on the same 1 October 2023 date by W.S.I. 2023/914, regulation 3. Northern Ireland retains the conditional duty.

Two errors follow from getting this backwards. Telling a small Northern Irish employer that they must record in all circumstances overstates the duty. Telling an English client that five employees is still the threshold understates it — and that is the more dangerous direction.

None of which is an argument for not recording. Reg 8 sets the floor, not the ceiling, and an unrecorded assessment is very difficult to evidence to anyone later — which is the same practical point our guide to the fire safety log book makes about records generally.

What must be recorded

Regulation 9 specifies:

"the significant findings of the assessment, including the measures which have been or will be taken by the person having duties under Article 25 or 26 pursuant to Part 3 of the 2006 Order and these Regulations"

and

"any relevant person or group of relevant persons identified by the assessment as being especially at risk from fire"

That second limb is a substantive requirement rather than a formality. Identifying people especially at risk is the hook that carries individual evacuation arrangements into the record — the same logic that underpins PEEPs elsewhere in the UK.

Scope: What Counts as "Relevant Premises"

Article 50 defines "relevant premises" by exclusion. Domestic premises are excluded, and domestic premises means:

"a private dwelling (including a stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises which is used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling)"

— but expressly not including houses in multiple occupation.

That carve-out from the carve-out is a real difference from England and it is easy to miss by analogy. In England the Fire Safety Order excludes domestic premises and reaches multi-dwelling buildings only through Article 6(1A), which brings in the structure, external walls and common parts — see fire risk assessments for flats and HMO fire risk assessments. In Northern Ireland, an HMO simply is not within the domestic-premises exclusion, so it does not need Article 6(1A)'s equivalent to be reached.

Article 50 also excludes ships engaged in normal ship-board activities under the master's direction, mines and offshore installations, borehole sites, premises occupied solely by the armed forces of the Crown and by visiting forces, and agricultural or forestry land away from buildings. "Premises" is otherwise broad — it includes installations on land, tents and movable structures.

Enforcement

Article 3(1) of the 2006 Order establishes the enforcing body:

"There shall be a body corporate to be known as the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board (in this Order referred to as 'the Board')."

Article 33 places enforcement of the fire safety duties on the Board, with authority to designate officers and provision for certain functions to be delegated to the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland or other prescribed persons in relation to particular workplaces.

Part 3 also provides the familiar enforcement instruments — prohibition notices (Article 36), enforcement notices (Article 37) and alterations notices (Article 38). The alterations notice is worth flagging because it is one of the three triggers for the recording duty: once one is in force, recording becomes mandatory regardless of employee numbers.

Practical Points for an Assessor Crossing Over

1. Cite the 2006 Order and the 2010 Regulations, not the RRO. Everything else in the report is undermined by getting the governing instrument wrong.
2. Name the duty-holders against articles, not against a single "responsible person". Article 25 for employer-to-employee, Article 26 for control-of-premises, with the extent of control stated.
3. Check whether reg 8 is engaged before advising on recording, and say which limb engages it. Then record anyway, and say why.
4. Do not import the English HMO reasoning. Article 50's domestic-premises exclusion does not reach HMOs.
5. The technical content largely travels. Hazard identification, means of escape, detection, compartmentation and management arrangements are the same discipline. It is the legal frame, the duty-holder mapping and the recording rule that change — which is exactly the same shape of difference as in Scotland, where the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 applies instead.
6. Wales shares the Order, but not everything built on top of it. The Fire Safety Order covers England and Wales, and section 156's recording duty runs across both — so the legal frame and the duty-holder mapping travel from an English report to a Welsh one. What does not travel are the England-only instruments layered on top: the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 each say at regulation 1(3) that they "extend to England and Wales but apply in England only". Reusing an English residential-block report structure in Wales imports secure-information-box, wayfinding, monthly-lift-check, fire-door-check and — from 6 April 2026 — residential evacuation-plan duties that do not exist there.

The 30-point fire risk assessment checklist covers the on-site ground that carries across jurisdictions, and the free FRA review date calculator will set a review interval by building type and risk level.

Summary

Northern Ireland has its own regime: Part 3 of the Fire and Rescue Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, with the Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010 in operation since 15 November 2010. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 extends to England and Wales only and has no application here.

The duty splits in two — Article 25 for employers in respect of employees in the workplace, Article 26 for anyone with control to any extent of relevant premises in respect of relevant persons — so the duty-holder mapping in a Northern Irish report should name articles and extents, not a single responsible person. Enforcement sits with the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board.

And the divergence most likely to trip up a cross-border assessor: Northern Ireland still conditions the recording duty on five or more employees, licensed or registered premises, or an alterations notice in force. England and Wales removed their equivalent threshold on 1 October 2023. The rules run in opposite directions, and applying either one in the wrong jurisdiction gets the advice wrong.

For assessors working across more than one UK jurisdiction, AssessKit keeps each site's findings, remedial actions and review dates in one place so the right frame stays attached to the right building. Start free — the Free plan covers two assessments a month, no card required. See pricing or read about who is building it.

Sources

• The Fire and Rescue Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 3 — The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 25 — Duties of employers to employees (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 26 — Duties in relation to relevant premises (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 33 — Functions of the Board (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 50 — Meaning of "relevant premises" (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulation 1 — Citation and commencement (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulation 8 — Duty to record information (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulation 9 — Specified information (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, Article 1 — extent (legislation.gov.uk)
• Building Safety Act 2022, section 156 — Amendment of Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Building Safety Act 2022 (Commencement No. 3, Transitional and Saving Provisions) (Wales) Regulations 2023, regulation 3 (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, regulation 1 — extent and application (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, regulation 1 — extent and application (legislation.gov.uk)
• Fire safety responsibilities under section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (GOV.UK)